New Haven Independent

Home Restorer Has Message For Hartford

by Allan Appel | August 28, 2009 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

nhifitzpatrick%20002.JPG A state tax credit program not only helped John Fitzpatrick rescue a historic home. It convinced him to help fix up the West River neighborhood — and to lobby state legislators to save the tax credits.

The tax program is threatened with extinction in current state budget negotiations. That raises the prospect of fewer owner-occupiers like Fitzpatrick moving in and investing themselves in historic houses and reviving neighborhoods.

A year after the Connecticut Historic Homes Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program provided Fitzpatrick (pictured) with approximately $10,000 savings on a $50,000 exterior restoration of his 1865 Victorian beauty on Chapel Street, a woman was killed by a stray bullet three blocks away.

“I realized,” he said, “that my responsibility extended beyond my front door … across the street, down the whole block.”

nhifitzpatrick%20006.JPG Result: Fitzpatrick has become a community activist. He founded the Chapel-Ellsworth Block Group. (He doesn’t like the term “block watch.”) He has taken the lead in a greenspace program that planted five trees along Chapel and last month beautified Monitor Square. And he tweets daily on the doings, good and sometimes not so good, in his West River neighborhood.

It all started with gutter replacement, new slate tiles on a Mansard roof, and five new Azek brackets.

If your home is on the state or national registry of historic structures or is in a historic district, the tax credit program can save approximately 20 to 30 percent of the cost of the work done. The three-family Fitzpatrick bought in 2003 was not on the list. But he had the historical research done; the house was accepted, and he proceeded.

After an owner gets approval from the state for the work under the program, he has to come up with his own money to do the work. Upon proof of completion, he takes the credit off his taxes or receives a cash payment.

Fitzpatrick said the payment process could be long, but it was well worth it. And each credit laid, the basis for the next phase of his restoration.

From 2000 through 2008, of the 291 projects covered by the tax credit program, 138, or 48 percent, had in New Haven zip codes, according to New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon, who supports Fitzpatrick’s quest..

“And many folks,” she added, “in the Westville/Ward 25 area have done preliminary planning but have not applied, so they are not included in those numbers.”

She said the program is essential to saving housing stock not in elite areas but in historic and transitional ones, where the “financials, or location, would not support construction otherwise.”

Fitzpatrick’s experience bears that out. He liked the program so much, in fact, he wrote to the entire New Haven state delegation. He personally lobbied Dillon about it at a West River community barbecue earlier this year at the beginning of the state budget process, using his experience as Exhibit A.

Since purchasing the house in 2003, Fitzpatrick put in about $100,000. Between the tax credit program, the Yale homebuyer program and the rent he collects on the two floor-through apartments above where he lives, he’s broken even.

Click here for an article by Dillon comparing the film credit with the historic home tax credit.

While the eight-year cost of the historic structure tax credit cost the state $4.8 million, she wrote, the projects generated $20 million in work, many for small, local contractors.

Historic Restoration Doesn’t Come Cheap

nhifitzpatrick%20003.JPG Fitzpatrick next needs next to fix the dormers right, for $10,000; remodel three kitchens and three bathrooms, $50,000; paint, $33,000, and restore the now absent wrap-around porch, which he verified in the 1879 map of the area. That would be $40,000.

Historic restoration doesn’t come cheap. He could repaint without scraping every inch clean for less than half the estimate. “More than one contractor,” he recollected, “said, ‘Take it [the mansard roof] off.’” The contractor meant replace it with a kind of vinyl siding and be done. “But I couldn’t do that.”

Fitzpatrick did it right, custom milling the new parts. For the crown moulding and the replacement of five brackets he used a product called Azek, a custom plastic that resists moisture and aging. It was approved by the historic preservation and museum division of the Commission on Culture and Tourism, which administers the tax credit project.

Fitzpatrick said that on his block of Chapel, between Ellsworth and the Ella Grasso Boulevard, only three of some 12 houses are owner-occupied. Restoration work of this kind may attract more owner-occupiers, as well as attentive and community minded tenants, he suggested.

nhifitzpatrick%20004.JPG “If the historic homes tax credit program is suspended,” he said, the equation that makes the restorations possible “will change, and it may not be financially prudent to continue with the rehab.”

“This has been very rewarding,” he said. “I never knew the neighborhood. Now I see there are people both willing to take the initiative and to join the effort.” He posts twice daily on Twitter with updates on the status of West River.

Fitzpatrick is no longer working at the neuroscience labs at Yale Medical School that employed him during the renovation work; he is looking for a new job. Even with the tax credit restored, no new historic rehab is going to take place until he lands one.

As to the legislation, CGS 10-416, which established the tax credit rehab program, State Rep. Dillon wrote that it has been suspended in the governor’s proposed new budget. The Democratic budget retains it.

Karen Senich, the director of the state’s Commission on Culture and Tourism, which administers the program, characterized it this way: “The program is significant because it’s urban revitalization, preservation, smart growth, and it creates jobs. A very successful program.”

Share this story

Share |

Comments

Posted by: Bill Hosley | August 27, 2009 11:27 PM

Thanks for sharing this great profile of preservation action. We can't bring cities back without a mindset that is relentless about recycling an utilizing the physical qualities that distinguish our cities from everywhere else. Sounds like Fitzpatrick deserves a medal!

Posted by: robn | August 28, 2009 8:49 AM

One correction...

The State does not give a tax credit directly to the owner, but gives them a voucher. Homeowners can't take the tax credit directly but must sell it through a broker to a CT corporation, both of which take a cut. This is a stain on an otherwise great historic renovation program because it's clear that large business lobbyists had to get their 20% vig. I'd love to hear more backstory on the authors/editors of this bill and their motivations for giving a shameless cut of fat to corporations who add no value to the historic renovation process.

Using the $4.8M/8year cost noted article, the state can save $1.6M over the next eight year with no change for taxpayers if they make reduce the program by 20% and make the tax credits direct to owner. Do the right thing LEG.

Posted by: Rep. Pat Dillon | August 28, 2009 10:39 AM

Robn
Our nonpartisan staff is pretty busy but you raise a good point. We can look into it.
For what it's worth, now that you've brought it up, we might audit many tax credits. I'd start with the big big big ones if we're going to look behind a relatively small credit that overwhelmingly benefits New Haven.
Take research and development. Does it go, in every case to R&D? Do we audit that? I can think of one big firm - big - that benefited from that for years, and it isn't clear how much research got done. It is carried on the corporate balance sheet though.
Take the film credit. There's been ample evidence that Connecticut's credit is structured in a way that does not benefit the Connecticut economy as much as it could.
There's more, but that's a start.
You raise good questions that should be applied across the board.

I give John a lot of credit for the risk he took.
He made a very persuasive case to me. In fact the support for the Historic Homes and Structures credit has come - in my case - from grassroots people like John, coming up to me at social gatherings and neighborhood meetings. If he and others had not taken the time to do that, we wouldn't have known how important it is to New Haven property owners, nor how many jobs it generates right here.
This isn't a heroic measure with drawings on easels and press conferences and lobbyists.
Yet John and others are restoring our neighborhoods building by building, block by block.

Posted by: anon | August 28, 2009 11:02 AM

Due largely to state and federal policies and tax codes, right now it's cheaper for residents to build/purchase a new McMansion (using high-polluting Chinese building materials) in rural Connecticut than to fix up a house in one of our beautiful 400-year-old cities or towns. It should be the other way around. Why are Connecticut's priorities so backwards?

Even before considering the disinvestment this produces in our cities and towns, is it fair to "subsidize" wasteful new construction by outsourcing all of the the environmental costs to China?

I hope Governor Rell and our state reps will look into this and fix the equation before it is too late.

Posted by: Norton Street | August 28, 2009 12:26 PM

Wait, wait...so there are actually people out there like this? Incredible.

Fitzpatrick,
Your work has made tangible improvements in the neighborhood. The amount of significant architecture in West River is enormous, unfortunately it is often covered by vinyl siding and cheap additions. Thank you for everything you have done.

And chipped wood and peeling paint are a million times better than vinyl siding. I hate when people use the excuse that our neighborhoods are decrepit and therefore not worth investing in. These houses are 100+ years old! What do people expect!? People complaining about chipped paint on one of these wood houses is like complaining that your grandmother has wrinkles. In this example, vinyl siding is the equivalent of a face lift and botox injections. James Howard Kunstler put it best when he described vinyl siding on a house as mummifying it.

Posted by: robn | August 28, 2009 1:29 PM

REPDILLON,
Please do dig into every wasteful thing you can find. I hope you understand my point... that i also admire renovators such as John and the stimulus value of the credit. I would even consider using the credit myself if I could. Nevertheless, as a taxpayer I resent structure of the credit which provides to non-contributing parties what can only be considered a classic vigorish.

NORTONSTREET,
Also, when vinyl burns it turns into dioxin, one of the most lethal substances on earth.

Posted by: Rep. Pat Dillon | August 28, 2009 3:08 PM

There are several programs, some for commercial and mixed use, some for residential.
The homes credit is
here

Posted by: robn | August 28, 2009 4:29 PM

Thanks Rep Dillion,

Now how about the Vig? Is it another example of corporate welfare that somebody extorted for their support of the bill? How about a roll call and some authorship?

Posted by: Stephanie FitzGerald | August 28, 2009 8:12 PM

The plantings at the park at Winthrop and Chapel/Derby are beautiful. Thank you!

Posted by: City Hall Watch | August 29, 2009 8:20 AM

It is so very interesting that CT is considering whacking this credit and at the same time, that it's tax credit history and appreciation of it is so limited. One need only look to Savannah, GA who used a state sponsored tax credit program to preserve and restore the primary historic district around all the squares and then was extended to the Victorian District beyond that. The program was novel at the time but it helped preserve downtown, saved all the houses, even the ones in really bad shape and created multi-family affordable units and singles in the Victorian District. How is it and why is it that Connecticut is always a day late and a dollar short on these initiatives and then always wring their hands wondering if it is worth it? Do we just have stupid people in state government and in the political establishment or is it that these people just don't get out much? Come on. This was used in GA 25 or more years ago and was a national model. God help us.

Posted by: robn | August 30, 2009 11:09 AM

CHW,

You're dead on the money. New Haven has some of the finest multi-family housing stock in the country and a lot of it is rotting because of neglect. I've always hoped that, lacking support from higher up, New Haven could come up with some tax incentive structure for private developers to purchase and rehab large (commodity of scale) swaths of the city in geographically isolated areas that would be free from creeping neglect at its fringes. East Rock is an example and the Yale home buyers program incentivized the stabilization of its subset, Goat Hill. That model was incremental and took time though. I wonder how a shorter term, high impact model could be developed without raising issues that imminent domain often does?

Posted by: City Hall Watch | August 30, 2009 9:41 PM

Robn:
The story of Savannah is remarkable. It brought people downtown, launched buisnesses, restored almost all the housing in the core city and the neighborhoods around it. Historic Savannah I think was the main mover, but there were others as well. Savannah Landmark was one too.

Home Restorer Has Message For Hartford

Comments

Special Sections

Legal Notices

Some Favorite Sites

Government/ Community Links

Flyerboard

Sponsors

N.H.I. Site Design & Development

NHI Store

News Feed